NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8117037" data-attributes="member: 6779196">What the gnome rolled and what the orc rolled have no relation to how good a choice the race was for the class. The orc may happen to be a better wizard than the gnome, but that happenstance is unrelated to their race. If that player had decided to play a gnome instead, they would be an even better wizard.No. That’s not how randomness works. Your choice of race is completely, totally, 100% unrelated to the results you roll on the dice. The only effect your choice of race has on your primary ability score is the fixed bonus it adds. Therefore, the race with the higher bonus in the stat you want to have higher is the better choice, regardless of whether you roll the dice before or after making that choice. You can look at it as insurance if you want; in fact that’s a pretty accurate analogy. But the fact of the matter is, choosing a race that boosts your primary ability will result in a higher score in that ability than choosing a race that doesn’t. Period.Sure, it “outweighs” the bonus from race in the sense that the result of the die roll can have a greater impact on the resulting score than the +2. But since the cap is 2 above the maximum possible roll, the total score will always be higher with a +2 than without it.This is where the insurance analogy breaks down. Unlike insurance, +2 in your primary ability score is always useful. Again, the result of the die roll may have a greater impact than the +2, but the +2 is never without impact.You don’t have to choose something optimal. But many players like to and I think the fact that the design can force those players to have to choose between playing something optimal or playing the race/class combination they want is a design flaw.There’s some conflicting information about what the game is “balanced around” coming from different members of the design team. Taking what has been said about the game’s underlying assumptions in its totality, along with some thorough analysis of the system math, I think it is clear that there are indeed some assumptions going into the design. If you start with 16 in your primary score, increase to 18 at 4th level and 20 at 8th level, and the DM follows the guidelines in the DMG about awarding treasure hordes or the guidelines in Xanathar’s Guide about parceling our magic items, the expected result is that you will have a 65% chance of hitting monsters with average AC for your level’s CR, at all levels. If Jeremy Crawford is earnestly claiming that the game isn’t “balanced around” those assumptions, I can only assume that he has a different understanding of what “balanced around” means than I do.I suspect he is suggesting that the game is intentionally designed such that, even if these assumptions are not met, you will still have a reasonable chance of victory over the course of a typical adventuring day. That would be consistent with some other things the designers have said about the way the game’s math is designed. In my opinion, that doesn’t mean the game isn’t balanced around that 65% accuracy benchmark. It just means the game is designed in such a way that 65% accuracy is not necessary for the PCs to be successful.</blockquote>

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